Nice drawings, the angles are a good idea, makes setting the saw up a doddle.
One method of making drawings easier to read when most people are only going to have access to a letter (A4) printer is to add the dimensions as a letter, than the last sheet has a table referencing the dimension lengths to the letters. Its extra work but dose allow letter size prints that are readable. If I remember vaughly you can assign variables in autocad which you can automaticly create a table from.
I do like these speakers and as I still have a pair of 166's minus a cabinet so I am realy (and have been for a while) tempted to build them. My main problem is convining the missis that we nead another sytem in another room! But as I have the use of a roll feed plotter I am going to print out some one to one plans and see how big they look in the flesh (sort of).

Just wanted to show you guys what I've been playing with the past few days...

So I'm now working on a curved version of my own, optimized for the FE166ES-R. The main problem I've been faced with is the huge magnet blocking airflow into the CC. So I knew that a protruding baffle probably wouldn't work, since a straight-through hole would be completely choked off by the magnet, and a cone-shaped hole would end up too large to fit in the box dimensions. The driver pretty much needs to mount flush to a single-thickness front panel.

Two other objectives:
1) I want it to look good.
2) I'd like access into the CC for convenient stuffing adjustments etc.

So the other night I dreamt up how to accomplish the above and integrate a nice baffle into the design, which doesn't protrude forward. In keeping with the semi-layertoned construction, it makes judicious use of curves.

With a driver mounted flush to the front panel, the baffle needs to extend outward to the sides, and also upward past the usual top of the box. I decided to extend the top of the box up to the height where a 12.7" x 12.7" baffle would stop, and then add 'cheeks' on either side, to extend out to the correct width. The vertical extension uses a 2" radius round off, created with the layered CNC panels. The cheeks would be built up from laminated stacks of plywood, then shaped on a router & table saw. The largest roundover bit I could find is 1.5" radius, so that's the curve I used for the cheeks. A deep angled cut then tapers the back side of the cheeks in, forming a nice teardrop profile from above.

As a bonus, the cheeks can be made detachable, with access ports behind. These cutouts additionally provide some extra internal clearance around the sides of the ES-R's giant magnet.

I just finished modeling the cheeks in 3D... still need to finish working out the CC internals.

Originally posted by hifiZen So I'm now working on a curved version of my own, optimized for the FE166ES-R. The main problem I've been faced with is the huge magnet blocking airflow into the CC. So I knew that a protruding baffle probably wouldn't work, since a straight-through hole would be completely choked off by the magnet, and a cone-shaped hole would end up too large to fit in the box dimensions. The driver pretty much needs to mount flush to a single-thickness front panel.

Just tuning in.

Iím really curious of the progress of the curved version and the possibilities of lending or buying drawings for my own project. Iíve scanned my home town for workshops that can do the CNC-milling and there are a couple companies that seem to be able to do it for a reasonable cost.

I would like to try to build this speaker with transparent sides using really thick Plexiglas (if I can find it to an acceptable cost). The interior lends its shapes from instruments like the saxophone and I really like to lay emphasis on that. Ecstatically my personal opinion is that it might look even better if it was possible to make the radius of the first and second bend a little bit bigger.

Does anyone know how the performance would be affected by increasing the radius of the first and second bend? As far as Iíve understood this design it is very well tuned and it wouldnít be to smart to alter the length between the bends if their length are of importance for the performance. But this I donít know, just sharing my thoughts.

I was playing a little bit in Autocad but I got outsmarted when it came to do curved cone surfaces. However it is just a little play with ideas. Would it bee possible to translate the cross section from a rectangle into a circle? I think Iíve read somewhere that the speaker first was designed with a circular cross section an then altered into a rectangle so that would be possible to build. One could CNC-mill a plug and maybe vacuum form the horn in two halves and put them togetherÖ Or maybe I just stick to the layered version

The picture is just a play with the computer an some pretty dumb ideas.

OK, the last eight weeks or so have been a bit nuts - long long hours at work, and some business travel. Finally getting back 'round to the plans this long weekend, now that I've had a chance to get some rest. I basically just need to figure out the design of the compression chamber, and a convenient means of adjusting the volume. Should have more to post soon...